There's been a lot of harsh comments about the performance. I thought overall it was good from both sides. What was lacking was creativity to unlock two fantastic defences. From their point of view Shaun Johnson is a huge miss.

Looking at England we need someone to give us a bit of spark. The halves, hull back and hookers need to offer a bit more. Tha halves are a difficult one. I think Widdop is sacrificing part of his own game to cover for the inexperience of Williams. Williams is a cracking young player but I think SM is asking bit much of him to guide an England side around against a very good NZ after 1 season of SL. That said we need to work on combinations so I'd stick with those two for the third test. Hardaker needs to join the line more and offer some sort of attacking threat. His defence has been solid as we all knew he would be but he has offered no threat in attack. The hookers again have been solid but need to step up another level.

The only change I would be looking to make is to put Bateman into the SR. He's not done anything wrong at centre but Cudjoe would probably give NZ more to think about.

I don't that, based on yesterdays performance, you can say that their halves were worse than ours.

because they had all the ball and territory in the first half and created zilch.Yes it was good England defence but set after set you never felt threatened by anything but a forward barging over, and For as poor as ours were we never really had any periods like they had in the Kiwi end. They didn't do much in the second period either and it was only when Luke came back on and put in some good kicks out of dummy half that got them on the front foot again, and their only try came off a lucky piece of play.So no, i stick by our halves still being better than theirs although it is nothing to rave about as both sets have been pretty dire so far.

Have you not been watching the International game for long?

Whilst it was dour, the result was in the balance nearly to the end & had Graham managed to fall on the ball correctly it could have been a draw.

Many people including myself have lamented the chasm between the two hemispheres, well now it’s down to inches.

Shameful is getting tonked by thirty plus points not seven.

You are not comparing like with like. IMO the Australian teams that best us by big points would have beaten yesterday's rabble by even more.

You are not comparing like with like. IMO the Australian teams that best us by big points would have beaten yesterday's rabble by even more.

You are being very unfair towards the England team to call them rabble.

Sure the Aussies of a few years ago would have put the cleaners through both those teams, but that lot are on the wane or have retired & that’s why N.Z. are currently No 1.

We can only play what’s in front of us & we played like an NRL team, rather than the flamboyant S.L style. Yes it was scrappy but if we want to be top dogs we have to play to their tried & tested methods.

Wouldn’t it be fantastic to see England blow everyone away playing free-flowing rugby, of course it would, but history shows it’s just a pipedream.

Australia won the World Cup so they are No1 not NZ

No, they're World Champions while New Zealand are the No1 ranked team in the World

back on topic,

Ridiculous premise for a thread topic

Why? There are many precedents in sport eg Steve McLaren at Newcastle United.